The Creative Writing Club
by myheartstillbleedsforyou
Summary: Virginia Woolf didn't feel like she needed friends. Being an outside observer looking in was totally fine with her, but unfortunately Jane Austen and the other members of the creative writing club felt that she needed to take a more active role in her writing. Eventual OC x Canon and one sided OC x OC. Rated M for language and sexual content.


I'm back. Enjoy

Afterschool Charisma (c) Kumiko Suekane

Original Characters by Myheartstillbleedsforyou

...

Virginia Woolf hurried out of the examination room, far away from the gruff face of Doctor Kamiya and his nameless nurses who bustled in and out of the various rooms to distribute pre-lunch therapy. She didn't like to linger in the Ward for Psychological Clone Health longer than she had to. Fortunately they had just finished the last electroshock therapy as she was walking in to the clinic. She wouldn't have to hear the horrid sounds of forced convulsions. The architect responsible for Saint Kleio's believed that thin white walls should be used liberally in the Ward. She didn't like how the sounds her penny loafers made against the floors echoed and reverberated against the walls, nor did she like how it amplified any small noises the fabric of her skirt made as she exited the examination room.

White walls always made Virginia feel nervous. After reading the short story in World Literature 201, Virginia felt that Charlotte Perkins Gilman didn't know what she was talking about when she insisted that madness was caused because of yellow wallpaper. Crazy bitch didn't have the slightest inkling of what anxiety due to architecture was. Well, maybe the original had the crazy excuse. The clone Charlotte was well adjusted- a smug bitch who had tripped Virginia in gym class once- they should have shut _her_ up in one of the examination rooms in the infirmary. See how long it took to make her crack.

As the young woman walked down the hallway with a prescription in her hand, she mused with some apprehension how the popcorn ceilings and smell of distilled bleach and alcohol always made her think: What next? Zolpidem? Adderall? Those were the only other names of drugs she knew were prescribed by the doctors here. Zelda Fitzgerald had told her once in a manic episode that they'd put her on those if she didn't at least try to bullshit an answer during Doctor Kamiya's medical examination. Virginia figured she'd be swallowing them at some point during the term no matter what came out of her mouth. It was a little known fact that each clone would inevitably contain a deformity, especially when it came to people like Virginia Woolf whose originals had committed suicide. The upmost care and scrutiny had to be taken for them to exist comfortably, and when you were only sixteen years old and the last living batch of DNA, the doctors had to make sure you were fully functional. Even if they had to heavily medicate you.

The doctor had been especially haggard looking this afternoon, rubbing his eye with his glasses moving up on his forehead and getting tangled in the shaggy blonde mane. He looked annoyed. Mostly all the teenage clones at Saint Catherine's enjoyed normal lives, groomed to be exact replicas of their predecessors and live on to commentate on modern affairs. Yet Kamiya and his esteemed colleagues could not yet seem to perfect the process. He probably hadn't even gotten a chance to have coffee. He had to have been pissed off at something Virginia had done previously because he hadn't even given his customary greeting, instead he had delved right into the interview.

"How do you feel, Virginia?"

They were always asking her that question, and each time she gave the same answer so that it sounded scripted. Maybe that was why they didn't believe her. Through her peripheral vision she could see Doctor Kamiya's pen was poised over a prescription pad like a spider waiting to swallow a fly. They'd fed her fluoxetine and citalopram like it was Halloween candy for years already, she wasn't even sure what it was supposed to do anymore. Deliberately she got off it after Christmas, and so far she hadn't felt any different than when she had been taking them. What other useless drug would they force her to swallow?

"I'm fine." Virginia always replied, "How are you Doctor?"

He had been grave. Not at all in the mood for games, yet completely willing to use his pen and prescription pad of shame to frighten her beyond compare. It filled Virginia with anxiety when she heard the frantic scratching of pen on paper, then heard the dreadful tearing.

"I'm becoming increasingly concerned about your wellbeing. This is your second year of high school, far longer than any predecessor has ever managed, and you can't give me any other indication of your wellbeing other than 'I'm fine'. Is there something wrong?"

"No sir?" she asked. Unsure what he wanted her to say. Should she make up a lie? She wanted to say that she honestly didn't worry about her own wellbeing. It was the wellbeing of the others in her group that she worried about. Not nearly as many girls had it as well off as she.

"Is it a boy?" Doctor Kamiya tried, "Trouble with grades?"

"No." she insisted. It couldn't be boy troubles at all, not when Virginia had come to her own self-discovery and found that her disinterest in boys had a name. According to Zelda it was called "being a lesbian". She also learned another name that described Doctor Kamiya in a nutshell: "heteronormative asshole".

"Another clone giving you trouble? Perhaps one of the ones from group? Do you need to be switched to a different time slot? Have any of the others, Eva perhaps-"

"No sir. I like them fine. In fact I'm friends with the majority."

Virginia turned the corner and went into the lobby, still shaking her head while remembering the mere suggestion that Doctor Kamiya had made about her group. They were all such good people. Kind souls whose originals had been diagnosed with so many mental illnesses after their deaths that the doctors at St. Kleio's felt it necessary they be monitored to be kept in good mental health. They were all in the same boat. Why would they ever cause her trouble? Even F. Scott was amiable if Virginia just ignored the ever present feud between him and Zelda. The cloned socialite author must have thought herself the clone of Sigmund Freud or some other professional because her diagnoses for the majority boiled down to "repressed lesbianism".

"Look at all of you women." She pointed an accusing finger at each and every one, even the hated ones. "Your originals were miserable and killed themselves because they were forced into a marriage they didn't want. _My_ marriage failed. Look at him. A disgusting, alcoholic, plagiarizing bastard who repressed my sexuality. At least 99.9% of us in this room are repressed lesbians, and I'll tell you why we need to take the steps to let it out: look at Sappho and Anne Sexton. Top of the classes. Not a pimple in their time here. Well-adjusted and popular compared to their originals. Both are raging lesbians. Free yourselves! Kiss a fucking girl!"

Upon rounding the corner, Virginia deposited her prescription to the head nurse where she was handed a bottle of pills and instructions as to how they were to be taken. The bottle would only be flushed down the toilet later before lunch, when she was sure that Marie de France and Anastasia Romanov were out of the dorm room. She would ordinarily leave the bottle in the drawer of her nightstand, but Zelda was a frequent visitor in addition to the biggest mooch to ever exist. Virginia didn't want to fuel another one of Zelda's medicated rages. Poor F. Scott probably wouldn't live after having to hear again that it was his original's fault that her original had died in a fire. But that wasn't her main worry right now. In addition to today's compulsory exam, Virginia still had an appointment to keep.

"Excuse me ma'am…" Virginia murmured quietly to the nurse. "I'm supposed to meet someone here, Doctor Kamiya said-"

"Yes." interrupted the nurse. Her uniform was stark white and like the others she didn't wear a name tag. "I asked her to wait in the lobby for you. Little snot wanted to go into the patient rooms and distribute flyers. She wanted me to give this to you before you met. Said you needed to let your original's emotions flow through you and answer the call to write, or something stupid like that."

She handed Virginia a flyer that looked as though a four year old had gotten hold of his parent's magazines and ripped out words instead of using the computer's typeface. Bloat words like "excitement", "misanthropy", and "revolutionary" peppered the page in addition to rather scribbly handwriting that stated the student was extended a personal invitation- from none other than the prestigious Victorian author Jane Austen- requesting their attendance every Monday and Wednesday evening after dinner to attend a spectacular new group called "The Creative Writing Club". The flyer stated a time and location: one of the old abandoned music rooms had apparently been refurbished to accommodate their needs, and Jane had made sure to emphasize that sweets were to be served at each function.

"I feel that you're not really connecting with the others as much as you should." Doctor Kamiya had told Virginia, rubbing his pant leg, "At least not with the right personalities to encourage your creativity. You need to get out of this slump and make new friends. I've arranged for a nice young lady to take you under her wing, Jane Austen has been looking for new writers for her latest project."

Virginia hoped upon hope that he was not referring to the Chatty Cathy that was causing a scene in the clinic lobby, trying with little success to coerce a young couple into accepting her flyer. The girlfriend kept slapping them away, causing Jane to drop a paper and then hand back another one from her vast stack in her arms. Virginia knew the couple well. They always sat next to the Fitzgeralds during therapy sessions and were caught once a week fornicating in the gym locker rooms (last week it had been Francisco Goya who had found them performing oral, the week before it had been Freud who had finally caught the two fucking against Mozart's Steinway piano). Hunter S. Thompson and his new flame of eight weeks seemed determined to cause quite a commotion in the school hallways of St. Kleio's. But then again what other entertainment did the clones really have other than fulfilling their purposes? Virginia wasn't one for the gossip and drama, but even she found herself eagerly anticipating group therapy every Sunday afternoon to hear the latest Hunter sexcapade. She thought that Jane Austen would have had more luck coercing Hunter into taking a flyer at lunchtime when he was alone. After his electroshock therapy he was voiceless and vulnerable, relying on his significant other to make decisions for him.

"I'm not a motherfucking author you bitch!" screamed the young lady Hunter was attached to. Jane Austen had to duck to avoid her fist as she screamed. "Take that flyer and shove it up your cunt!"

"Now Eva Braun…" said Jane with a naughty grin and a waggling finger. "You shouldn't say such things in a doctor's office! This is a hygienic facility. Naughty little girl!"

"Fuck off midget!" roared the clone. Hunter lolled helplessly under Eva's grip, looking tired and destitute. Despite how much he now resembled his drunkard original, Hunter was an amiable young fellow, standing a full inch taller than his original at 6'4 with a predilection for big breasts and glasses. His girlfriend possessed all that and more (much to the shock of the doctors). She was a certified teenage terror.

"Hunter's not joining any fucking 'creative writing' bullshit you try and stick him in." said Eva, "He doesn't need you bringing up repressed memories that he's working through by himself!"

"What repressed memories?" asked Jane innocently. Virginia thought she could see Hunter focusing on the flyers littering the ground, the writer's sparkle reviving his eyes. "He seems adjusted to me. I think that my club can supplement his inner need to write. Here Hunter, have another flyer-"

"Don't fucking touch him!" yelled Eva. Her grip was so tight that even from this distance Virginia could see the bruises beginning to form on Hunter's arm. A nurse had to quiet her down and take Hunter to a chair before she started laying into Jane. Virginia wished she had the courage to go and help as the nurse threatened her with the same treatments as Hunter.

While she recognized that he was in no condition to be in a relationship of the sort, Virginia was still infinitely more sympathetic to Eva's plight than to Hunter's. It was the former of the two that opened up the most in group therapy. Depression had many faces: Eva's was anger. Anger at her original's blinded enthusiasm and lack of personal autonomy. Anger for the eleven million people who were killed. Anger at the fact that Doctor Kamiya and his entourage had even cloned her in the first place, and especially because they had the gall of recreating her original's "mate"; the young clone couldn't even bring herself to say "partner" or "husband" no matter how briefly the originals had been together. Like Virginia and the multitudes that came before her, Eva too ate pills on the daily as though she had asked for them with a joyous "Trick or Treat!" emanating from her throat like a child. But unlike Virginia who remained docile and content, the medication only made Eva energetic and rabid, and it made her brave enough to attempt suicide in front of the clone Hitler.

"It was to punish him." Eva had insisted in group when she showed off the vertical scars on her wrists, obviously she hadn't been fucking around this time. "I wanted to make him suffer. If he's buried so deep in denial that he can't hear the Jews screaming in agony every night before he goes to sleep, I want to make sure he's haunted by me bleeding out and dying in front of him. It would serve that bastard right."

There had been an audible gasp in the room, and the only sharing they could get done were plaintive pleas for Eva not to attempt such a thing again. Hunter had said nothing. He was totally occupied tracing the skin of her thigh and oblivious to any form of authority that told him to stop. He did all of this calmly while Eva Braun laughed at each assertion that her cloned life had meaning. With a dismissive wave she declared her life had no meaning. She wasn't the clone of a regent or social activist. She was the clone of a fascist photographer as well as an accomplice to genocide; her life meant jack shit. Virginia had heard more horrifying confessionals than a Catholic priest, and the majority came from the mouth of the bitter Eva Braun.

"Eat shit and die!" was the last expletive that hissed from Eva's throat as she dragged a weak Hunter out of the clinic chair and out the glass doors. No doubt going to the boy's dormitories to put him to sleep and take care of him until the lunch bell tolled, reviving him enough so that he would emerge from his room and eat in solitude in the cafeteria.

 _Why doesn't she ever eat with him?_ Virginia wondered. _I've only ever seen her with Hunter in group, and yet she doesn't even touch the snacks they give out. I hope she eats something, even a cracker… Maybe Zelda has a point with the repressed lesbians. Hunter and Eva the most miserable couple I've ever seen in my life._

"Hey! You're her, _the_ Virginia Woolf!"

Jane Austen's high pitched squeal of a voice startled Virginia out of her stupor, and she soon found herself face to face with the cloned author. Her hands were seized by Jane's chubby fingers and shaken violently up and down in what she assumed was a greeting. Never had she known that such a beautiful, annoying little creature could exist. Jane was a bright and sociable creature. She spoke up often in classes, made friends with almost everyone she came into contact with, and often had the best presentations whenever the Expo came for the year. So unlike the cold, cloistered nature of her original according to all the textbooks written about her life. Like many other clones from earlier years, Jane's appearance was left to speculation. There were very few portraits of the original. Whoever met her had to trust that the past Jane Austen was truly a five foot tall cherubim looking creature with curls and a need for heavy glasses.

"This is amazing! Stupendous, the greatest honor to ever be bestowed upon a lowly creature such as I!" flattered Jane. "I've read everything you've done!"

"That my _original_ has done." corrected Virginia.

"No!" Jane insisted. "I mean what _you've_ written. You are Virginia Woolf. You're the one who wrote all those books after all. Wasn't like it was Plato or someone else!"

"Yes, but that was the original Virginia Woolf."

"No! It was _you_ Virginia! See, you've got to get rid of that awful mentality if you want to write anything good again. But I can help you. That's what Club is all about after all!"

"Tell me about the club."

"We have six members in the club currently." Jane said breathlessly. "There's Virgil and Homer, exceptional authors and great at giving input. Just make sure you don't let the other know you've asked for feedback from one."

"Hmm." Virginia said. She was familiar with both. They accosted teachers in English classes to see what the other wrote for their reports. When one found out, the other inevitably tried to revise his own work.

"Then there's William- Shakespeare I mean- he's really great in workshop when we read our own work to him! He loves writing romance scenes, and just the other day he helped Anne Brontë work on a poem she's been stuck on for ages."

"I see."

The clone of the Victorian author continued to prattle on, droning on for hours on the sisters Brontë and how each had discovered slam poetry, Russian village prose, and all other art forms imaginable and how each corresponding sister had found a new niche to which they believed supplemented their work best. Virginia followed eagerly out of the glass doors and across the green lawn to the main lecture and dormitory building, a tall imposing piece of architecture that was all Greek pillars and Victorian masonry, an odd combination for the multitudes of clones who lived there.

There was an hour left of regular classes before everyone filed down to the basement where the cafeteria was, and Jane had insisted that Virginia just _had_ to see the club room. Everyone was waiting for them there. And it was heavily implied that each of the members were just as eager to see the Virginia Woolf in action as Jane was to introduce her. Jane had a distinct voice, sounding like a laugh but feeling more like a sharp blow to the head from a paddle. She spoke with such conviction, such blind belief that for a moment Virginia didn't feel any sort of dissociation that was common in the confines of her room. There was only one wonderful thought that permeated through her mind: I am Virginia Woolf. Better than any hypnosis or medication that could supposedly help her understand this.

"I really want to gather all the writing minds of this school and encourage them to create something that would make them proud." Jane said quietly. She led Virginia down a dark corridor where composers could be heard playing their instruments in an endless study for a new concerto. Mozart was in full form from the sounds coming behind a large imposing door, and down the hall Beethoven beckoned them further into the dark hall.

"Writing is very important to me." Jane murmured as they passed the music rooms. "As I'm sure it is to anyone of us clones here in the school. I hope that if I gather every writer here to benefit from each other's feedback, I can encourage the whole school to write. I've always wanted to do this ever since they taught me who my original was. I think it's what I might have wanted, back then at least… Don't you think it's a good idea, Virginia?"

She took a while to respond. Didn't know how to take Jane's blind conviction and form her own response to it that could be as altruistic.

"I think it's a wonderful idea." Was her faux proper answer. But was it really enough to express what she felt?

"I'm glad you think so!" replied Jane with a smile. They had stopped outside of the creative writing room, side by side, and could hear from within the door the melding of minds. What sounded like a sonnet being read in Greek by a feminine voice echoed sweetly with the music of Mozart and Beethoven. More masculine barking tones reading a slam poem in old English.

"Ready?" Jane asked. She clutched her bit of fliers closer to her chest.

Virginia Woolf wasn't sure, but she reached forward to open the door.


End file.
